1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for performing a printing job in a shared manner between connected image forming apparatuses.
2. Description of the Related Art
The conventional image forming apparatuses such as copying apparatuses are classified into low-speed apparatuses, medium-speed apparatuses, and high-speed apparatuses according to their intended use or copying speeds. The general trend indicates that the sales price increases as the copying speed of the copying apparatuses increases. Usually, high-speed apparatuses are used at copy centers for large-quantity copying. On the other hand, in average-sized offices, low-speed apparatuses or medium-speed apparatuses are widely used. Although the use frequency of a copying apparatus in an office is average throughout the year, there are times such as at weekends, month ends, or year ends when it is necessary to temporarily perform large-quantity copying. However, such exceptional cases of large-quantity copying do not merit a substantial investment for installing a high-speed apparatus.
Thus, to tackle such exceptional cases of temporary large-quantity copying without installing a high-speed apparatus, two copying apparatuses each capable of reading image data from an original image, storing the image data in a memory device, and outputting the image data can be installed in an interconnected manner via a data communicable interface. Consequently, it becomes possible to transfer the image data read by one of the copying apparatuses to the other copying apparatus and output the image data by using both the copying apparatuses. That doubles the copying productivity thereby enabling large-quantity copying if and when necessary.
Meanwhile, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2002-109527 or Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2006-13882 discloses an image forming apparatus having a simultaneous two-side reading functionality in which separate reading units are used to simultaneously read the front surface and the rear surface of a two-side original thereby enhancing the productivity.
However, in the case of concurrent reading with the use of a plurality of image forming apparatuses or in the case when a single image forming apparatus includes a plurality of reading units, the difference in read characteristics of each reading unit causes the print result to have different print qualities.